How long did the Balsas fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 June 2024 to 25 June 2024 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 June 2024 to 25 June 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,088 hectares (30.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Balsas (3,114 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Brazil (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

BR · Brazil · 2024-06-11 → 2024-06-25

Balsas fire, June 2024 Balsas

Out · last detection 25 Jun 2024, 17:02 UTC

The fire started on 11 June 2024 in Balsas, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,088 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 569th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 1263 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Balsas · 2022 Balsas · 2026 Recursolândia · 2024 Balsas · 2025

Burnt area: 3,088ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 11 Jun 2024 – 25 Jun 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 11 Jun; 2024
Heat detections: 116; in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Danger at start: 38; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 84MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Jun25 Jun

Play back 25 Jun 2024

How it evolved, day by day

11 Jun 14 Jun 18 Jun 20 Jun 23 Jun 25 Jun

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

33°high

45km/h · peak gust

31%lowest humidity

It had gone 44 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 530 ha in 2017, 876 ha in 2019, 420 ha in 2020, 1,650 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,195 ha that had burned before.

1,566 ha Balsas fire, August 2022 3,749 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (31 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Balsas 101,767 inhabitants where it started

3,114 ha reached on 11 Jun

0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area0.12 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.12 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Danger (FWI)
11 Jun	32.0 °C	37 %	44 km/h	High 38
12 Jun	32.0 °C	31 %	40 km/h	High 38
13 Jun	32.6 °C	37 %	40 km/h	High 38
14 Jun	33.4 °C	35 %	42 km/h	Very high 40
15 Jun	32.0 °C	36 %	45 km/h	Very high 40
16 Jun	31.5 °C	35 %	45 km/h	Very high 40
17 Jun	31.9 °C	34 %	37 km/h	High 37
18 Jun	32.7 °C	33 %	42 km/h	Very high 40
19 Jun	32.3 °C	39 %	43 km/h	Very high 39
20 Jun	32.3 °C	34 %	41 km/h	Very high 38
21 Jun	32.3 °C	36 %	42 km/h	Very high 39
22 Jun	32.4 °C	34 %	41 km/h	Very high 39
23 Jun	33.1 °C	31 %	37 km/h	High 36
24 Jun	32.5 °C	35 %	32 km/h	High 33
25 Jun	33.0 °C	31 %	40 km/h	Very high 39
26 Jun after	33.6 °C	32 %	36 km/h	High 36
27 Jun after	33.7 °C	31 %	28 km/h	High 34
28 Jun after	33.5 °C	32 %	22 km/h	High 30
29 Jun after	34.3 °C	30 %	24 km/h	High 32
30 Jun after	34.2 °C	30 %	30 km/h	High 35
1 Jul after	33.5 °C	32 %	26 km/h	High 33
2 Jul after	33.1 °C	30 %	44 km/h	Very high 41
3 Jul after	32.6 °C	31 %	46 km/h	Very high 44
4 Jul after	32.9 °C	30 %	38 km/h	Very high 40
5 Jul after	32.6 °C	32 %	44 km/h	Very high 43

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

↔

Before · 4 Jun 2024

After · 2 Jul 2024

Before After

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 23 June 2024 the air beside the fire reached 31 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak31 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1045 µg/m³

Optical depth0.31

WHO 15

1516171819202122232425262728

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 116Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.

⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.

Date and time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Balsas fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 June 2024 to 25 June 2024 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 June 2024 to 25 June 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,088 hectares (30.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Balsas (3,114 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Brazil (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 193 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Start date: 17 June 2024 → 11 June 2024.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 193.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 June 2024 to 25 June 2024. 116 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.

Where it burned